14 February 2013 - The Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) membership has adopted the OGC CF-netCDF Data Model extension to the
existing OGC Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) Core Encoding Standard version
1.0.

The
CF-netCDF Data
Model is a
flexible data model widely used in climate and weather forecast systems and in
other geoscience communities. The CF conventions define metadata that provide a
definitive description of what the data in each netCDF variable represents, and
the spatial and temporal properties of the data. This enables users of data
from different sources to decide which quantities are comparable, and
facilitates building applications with powerful extraction, regridding, and
display capabilities. The candidate CF-netCDF Data Model extension to the existing OGC Network Common Data Form (NetCDF)
Core Encoding Standard version 1.0 is
the latest step in a longer-term plan for establishing CF-netCDF as an OGC
standard for binary encoding. This will
enable standard delivery of data in binary form via several OGC service
interface standards, including the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Feature
Service (WFS), and Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Interface Standards.

The OGC CF-netCDF encoding
supports electronic encoding of geospatial data, specifically digital
geospatial information representing space- and time-varying phenomena. NetCDF (network Common Data Form) is
widely used internationally to communicate and store many kinds of
multidimensional data, although it was originally developed for the Earth science
community. The NetCDF data model is
particularly well suited to providing data in forms familiar to atmospheric and
oceanic scientists: namely, as sets of related arrays.

NetCDF
was developed and is maintained and actively supported by the Unidata Program
Center of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) (www.unidata.ucar.edu),and UCAR is the OGC member
that submitted this candidate standard to the OGC. The OGC NetCDF Core Encoding Standard has been formally recognized by US Government NASA and NOAA standards
bodies. UCAR and other OGC members introduced the first NetCDF specification as
a candidate OGC standard to encourage broader international use and greater
interoperability among clients and servers interchanging data in binary form.

The CF-netCDF Data Model extension to the existing OGC Network Common
Data Form (NetCDF) Core Encoding Standard version 1.0 is available along with
other netCDF standards and a netCDF Primer at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/netcdf .

The OGC is an international
consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research
organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop
publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable
solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based
services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to
make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any
application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.